Choosing a Control Deck in The Witchwood

Choosing a Control Deck in The Witchwood

Article:LeRooster

Graphics:Blizzard

May 2nd, 2018 22:04 GMT

Choosing a Control Deck in The Witchwood

As a fan of slow, grindy decks, I've recently had to face some harsh realities about the current meta. Part of me wants to play some pure form of control decks. Unfortunately, with the power level and sustain of some of the cards in aggressive and midrange strategies, it is difficult to play a control deck without a way to win the game quickly. Some of the recent deck lists from the early days of Witchwood got me thinking about deck construction in general, and I thought today I would spend a bit of time discussing possible deck choices for control decks and why they may or may not work.

Aggressive decks are capable of putting enormous tempo and pressure on a control player, but that's par for the course. The problem, recently, is that it isn't uncommon to see a Lich King shoved into an aggressive decks to give them a high-end threat that's a better draw than a late-game Lost in the Jungle. Moreover, the rise of Baku decks means that control decks cannot simply grind out games without risking serious board control or life total problems. The Paladin decks are able to produce consistent threats and chip damage via upgraded hero power and Vinecleavers, making it important for slower decks to close out the game quickly. If you take too much time to close out a game, a Paladin deck will be able to rebuild their board, diminishing your potential answers over time with their seemingly endless stream of Silver Hand Recruits. Hunter, on the other hand, will simply Steady Shot you to death.

Ultimately, I feel this is why we haven't seen decks like Quest Warrior perform well at the top of the game. The deck has a lot of strong qualities, but fails to consistently and quickly threaten to end the game. I would wager a guess that the success rate of any control deck in the current meta is much higher if it is able to close games quickly. For this reason, I think that if you are on the fence about which Warlock variant to play (control with or without Cube), the Cube option is a strictly better choice. Even though Priest has fallen off a bit, I think the Mindblast Priest deck that Theo hit rank 1 Legend with from a few weeks ago is one of the best options for any form of control Priest deck. I'm not convinced the list is perfect, but I think the overall strategy is the correct approach to the metagame. At the beginning of almost every format we see aggressive decks do very well, and I think this form of control deck was able to capitalize on this. At the time it was mostly Hunter decks, which have died down a bit on ladder but still linger around. Having said that, the Paladin and Rogue decks don't seem to be going anywhere. Therefore, I think it is necessary to choose a control deck that can threaten to end the game the minute you have control of the board or game-state.

Also, as a general rule, I think control decks that can end immediately or very quickly are the superior choice for ladder. If your goal is to climb, having to slowly map out each of your opponents potential threats and your answers to them can become tedious and difficult. I suppose what I am saying is choose the easier or safer option. There is less risk of error and loss. These kinds of decks have a safety valve in that they let you have some "free wins" when the opportunity presents itself as opposed to grinding out games with Bloodreaver Gul'dan's hero power alone. Obviously, I encourage everyone to play optimally, but I think for ladder control decks that give us "free" or quick wins is the better option.

I would love to see a ladder meta where I can take my time and grind through every game slowly with something like Quest Warrior, but what am I supposed to do when my opponent plays The Caverns Below on turn 1? I mean, we're going to lose most games to that deck with control decks, but at least if they have a rough draw or we buy enough time, Mindblast or Cubelock can kill them immediately.

What I got from this article; Control is too weak right now, except for Warlock, so play CubeLock. :-( Not being negative on the article, I just agree with the basic assessment that Warlock is just that strong.

"He's like a Kakuna with Flamestrike." - Artosis 25.7.2014 \\ "Sometimes you gotta' be manly to get out of the group stage, Reynad." -Artosis 17.10.2014 \\ “There goes your dream of a frivolous lawsuit with a brewing company.” – Tasteless 26.8.2015

This article articulates my feelings of the meta pretty well. I've loved all the heavier grindy control priests or mages and old control warrior, but since Gadgetzan it's felt like control based on the idea of threat removal and outlasting opponents does not have tools to survive the onslaught of tempo and combo decks.

I also agree that control warlock is the closest we get to a control deck atm but why would you not play cubes and doomguards if you are playing warlock anyways? The fact that control warlock should beat cubelock isn't enough to make that deck worth playing atm i feel.

The common theme of the top decks during last few expansions seems to be cheating out stuff way under it's manacost, either in the form of getting things out too early like skull and lackey, or filling a board with 20+ mana worth of stuff off of one card like Gul'dan, N'zoth and now hadronox. To some extent call to arms does that too but I feel like that card would be much less oppressive if it summoned copies of the minions instead of thinning the deck and helping pallys to curve out.

I feel like getting a few reasonable control decks out isn't that far off, it's just a question of having a board sweeper like dragonfire or such on a few classes, mainly priest or warrior right now. Paladin could honestly too play control but there is no reason to with how strong the aggressive even and odd variants are. If excavated evil and/or lightbomb were available I think a control priest list would be playable, if not T1. Warrior with a shieldmaiden or similar midrange minion that allows shield slam and the new armor blade flurry to be used to knock down midrangey boards could also become a thing. But alas we don't have any of that and instead we get to play with cubes and call to arms for another good while. Which also means that the next few expansion either need to powercreep hard or get the witchwood feel were beyond the obvious odd/even decks their impact is quite limited.

I have found control warlock to be good in this meta, even when the only win conditions are Bloodreaver Gul'dan and Rin, the First Disciple (which is infuriating to play against but great to play with). It is almost impossible to beat quest rogue, and the more burn heavy tempo mages can be very tricky, but it does very well against all the paladin decks I see.

I admit that some of my success comes from my opponents not knowing what cards I have. I run double Twisting Nether and people rarely expect a second one. I also run two Oozes, which is great against paladin and cubelock, where I cannot let Skull of the Man'ari survive, because versus cubelock is all about keeping Doomguard off the board.

I think that control is in a good spot. Control mage can even do okay. But my experience is that the meta is very rock-paper-scissors-like. There are paladin decks which are good against anything except for the control decks (warlock, priest, mage) and to counter those there are decks like quest rogue.

Edit: I'd add that I always prefer control decks so I do better with them than other decks. I think players do better with a deck they are comfortable with rather than a deck style they don't like but is currently strong.